Yucca Mountain News Clips - Friday, August 7, 2009

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, August 7, 2009
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Las Vegas SUN
August 07, 2009

IBLV Editorial: Reid a savvy Yucca foe--Senator's influence helping Nevada kill nuclear dump plan

Senator’s influence helping Nevada kill nuclear dump plan

The proposal to bury the nation’s high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is not quite dead, but it is closer to elimination than ever, thanks to the persistence of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The Nevada Democrat announced last week that the Obama administration and the Energy Department have agreed to cut off funding in the 2011 federal budget for the department’s license application to build a permanent dump at Yucca. That means the application process before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would come to a halt.

The only money that would remain in the budget for the repository would be used to ramp down work at the site with the intent of shutting it down.

“This is a major victory for Nevada,” Reid said. “I am pleased that President Obama has lived up to his promise to me and all Nevadans by working with me to kill the Yucca Mountain project.”

Until the project is officially dead, though, Nevada cannot afford to let up in its effort to kill the dump plan. The potent nuclear power lobby and its friends in Congress are still looking for ways to keep the repository proposal alive.

The nuclear power utilities that generate the waste certainly don’t have Nevada’s interests at heart. They don’t care about the dangers of moving high-level radioactive waste across the country. All they want to do is placate shareholders and ratepayers.

This is one advantage of Nevada having Reid in the position of Senate majority leader. As the most powerful member of the Senate, Reid has masterfully used his influence to make sure a radioactive waste dump that would endanger the lives of Nevadans is not shoved down the state’s throat.

The state is fortunate to have Reid in its corner.

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Lincoln County Record
August 06, 2009

Yucca Mountain Funding Cut

By Dave Maxwell
Staff Writer

Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the most powerful opponent of Yucca Mountain in Congress, stated July 30 that the Obama administration and the Energy Department have agreed to cut off all funding to pursue a license application for the Yucca Mountain project in the 2011 budget.

A news release from Reid's office said, "The only funding allocated for Yucca will be used to conclude the work being done at the site, bringing the ill-conceived project to its rightful end. This is a major victory for Nevada. I am pleased that President Obama has lived up to his promise to me and all Nevadans by working with me to kill the Yucca Mountain Project."

On July 29, the Senate voted to cut next years' funding from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission review of the Yucca license application to $29 million. Obama had requested they receive $56 million.

"It will be terminated. There's no money and there's no way to do it," Reid said in a conference call when he made the announcement.

But killing the project outright would require an act of the full membership of Congress to change the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Act that requires spent nuclear waste be sent to Yucca Mountain. That law remains on the books, so the project could in theory be revived.

Paul Seidler, Senior Director of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying arm of the nuclear power industry said, "All I can really say is the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is the law of the land. Until the nuclear waste policy act is changed, the law is very clear on what has to take place.

He said that while Senator Reid may be able to shut off the funding for Yucca Mountain, "At some point in time, you still have to go back and follow the Nuclear Waste Policy Act or modify the Nuclear Waste Policy Act."

The 2010 federal budget includes funding for a commission to be set up to study alternatives to Yucca Mountain. However, Energy Secretary Steven Chu has not appointed anyone yet to the commission. It will likely take up to two years to make its recommendations.

A few weeks ago, Senator Reid said asking the Department of Energy to withdraw the license application was not in his plans. He said he did not think there was any need of that. "I'm convinced that for the foreseeable future, the next 50 to 100 years, we'll simply store the spent fuel rods on-site."

Cutting out funding by 2011 to pursue a license application for Yucca Mountain will also likely shut off any need for Lincoln County government to pursue mitigation measures relating to the building of a railroad in Nevada to transport spent nuclear waste, including the Caliente Rail Alignment.

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Lincoln County Record
August 06, 2009

Banking on "Green"

By Dave Maxwell
Staff Writer

Nuclear waste material may not be coming through Lincoln County, if the Yucca Mountain project is shut down, but more understanding about the need for nuclear energy and educating the public about energy conservation will continue, said Vaughn Higbee in an appearance before the Lincoln County Commissioners at their regular meeting August 3.

Speaking on behalf of the Lincoln County Nuclear Oversight Program, Higbee said it was still important, even without Yucca Mountain, "to teach our youth about energy conservation and the enormous untapped potential that Nevada holds." He said the mission statement of the Oversight program calls for "a greener, cleaner world and we believe that Nevada has the potential to usher in an era of energy conservation and innovation."

Higbee noted education is so important because energy is becoming so critical and the prices of coal and oil, non-renewable resources are going up so much. The need is great to create "affordable energy" of wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear. There are also many questions about what this can mean for Nevada.

By 2020, Higbee noted, the United States could experience a 50 percent short fall in total energy production. At present, 52 percent of useable energy comes from coal. About 20 percent of U.S. energy comes from nuclear power. However, if the government's Cap and Trade bill becomes law, it might spell the end of the coal industry. Critics don't like the pollution that comes from coal-fired power plants. Nevada Senator Harry Reid has said he does not want any more coal-fired power plants built in Nevada.

Higbee said conservation is the key to saving energy. He continued that nuclear is the best way to create it. It is necessary to teach the youth about the importance of conservation and introduce "conservation skills" early. He noted that people can save quite a lot of energy themselves at home just by unplugging lights and appliances that are not in use. He said studies have shown that 40 percent of all electronic and appliance energy is consumed when they are shut off, accounting for about $4 billion spent on electricity used when the appliance or electronic devise is not turned on. The average American home has approximately 20 to 40 electronics plugged in that are not turn on, but still consuming power.

He said Nevada could be the nation's largest energy hub and the leader in energy technology with solar, geothermal, Biomass and nuclear. He said the recycling of nuclear waste needs to be considered. Several European countries have had great success with recycling nuclear waste. Higbee said Nevada could be a state where nuclear energy could be sent to be recycled and might even progress to the point of having the ability to export energy.

The United States needs to embrace nuclear energy, Higbee said, and learn to produce enough to exceed even our own needs. Nevada's resources include 300 plus days of sunshine per year, ideal for the solar industry. There are 40,000 million acres of Pinyon-Juniper forests in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado for biomass energy. Geothermal power can be harnessed from several hot springs throughout the state, including the Caliente Hot Springs. In addition, Yucca Mountain could be turned into a reprocessing site for nuclear waste, instead of an underground storage site.

Educating the public, both youth and adults, about the need is one of the goals being set by the Lincoln County Nuclear Oversight Program under Director Connie Simkins. Higbee said they plan to make presentations in the schools around the county, at town board and city council meetings, and various types of public functions and gatherings.

Commissioner Ronda Hornbeck, in response to the presentation, said why wouldn't you want to be educated about nuclear energy and conservation methods? "To not do that would be frightening," she said.

Out spoken local nuclear power critic, Marge Detraz, claimed during the public comment period following Higbee's presentation, that even educating people about the need for nuclear power and learning more about energy conservation is really just another ploy by the Central Nevada Protection Working Group to get the Caliente Rail Corridor built to take nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain Repository. This angered Commissioner Tommy Rowe who responded by saying working with the Department of Energy regarding the railroad through the county for nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain was to protect Lincoln County, so mitigation measures could be pursued.

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Politics Daily
August 06, 2009

Harry Reid Completes Two-Decade Battle to Block Nevada Dump Site

Bonnie Goldstein

Another WomanUp guest post from writer and investigator Sally Denton:

U.S. Senator Harry Reid has finally stopped the so-called "Screw Nevada" legislation that has plagued my old home state for the last 22 years. Last week, the Senate Majority leader used his hard-won "juice" to negotiate an agreement with the White House and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, dealing a death blow to the Yucca Mountain project -- the nation's only proposed nuclear waste repository, scheduled to open in 2010. "This is a major victory for Nevada," said Reid, who for most of his political career has fought against the treacherous burial site in the backyard of his district.

Reid's battle began in 1987, when Congress approved construction of the dump facility, where 70,000 tons of deadly radioactive waste would be stored for 10,000 years. Nevadans were outraged to become the nation's dumping ground, but as a freshman Democratic senator, Reid had no political muscle to stop it. Now, with the support of the Obama administration and his powerful position, Reid delivered what he's been promising his constituents for two decades.

For at least half a century, the U.S. government has wondered where to dispose of deadly waste from nuclear power plants and arms laboratories. "Congress started looking around and said, 'Okay, let's bury it someplace,' " Las Vegas Sun publisher Brian Greenspun once told "60 Minutes." " 'Okay, who has only two senators and only one representative, no political clout whatsoever? And who lives in a place that is perceived . . . to be nothing but desert and wasteland?' And they said, 'Ah-ha! Nevada.' "

Since then, the government has spent $13 billion on the project --located 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- which is now all but officially terminated. On July 29, the Senate voted to cut funding to a mere $29 million -- the bare-bones amount needed to shut it down.

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Michigan Live
August 06, 2009

Editor's notebook: Congress makes wrong call on nuclear waste

by Jackson Citizen Patriot

While Congress has made headlines with the controversial "cap-and-trade" proposal, its actions on a less-noticed aspect of energy policy should raise concerns for us here in Michigan.

The U.S. Senate last week agreed to close the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada. If small differences with a House bill can be resolved, this means the nation will go without a single repository for this dangerous waste.

Nuclear materials now are stored at plants, including some in Michigan that are close to the Great Lakes. Are these sites safe? Yes. But it would make more sense to place this waste in the Nevada desert? Absolutely!

Congress is playing politics with this issue. Lawmakers are going along with President Obama, who promised during his campaign to close Yucca Mountain.

This action comes after 13.5 billion taxpayer dollars have been spent there.

Worse, Congress has approved spending another $196 million for work on the site this year.

If Yucca Mountain is going to receive federal money, have it do its job — keeping spent nuclear materials in a safe spot.

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Canada Free Press
August 06, 2009

By Institute for Energy Research

Just over a month ago, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey energy tax.[1] Much of the debate focused on how much the bill will cost Americans. For example, the Congressional Budget office claimed the cap and trade section of the bill would only cost $175 a year in 2020, but this claim has been thoroughly debunked. The real question is how much confidence should we have in the modeling assumptions that the CBO and other modelers rely upon?

To estimate the costs and benefits of cap and trade legislation, economic models rely on computer models. The accuracy of these models depends on many assumptions. The problem is that some assumptions cannot be calibrated to actual data because those data, in many cases, do not exist. Some of the most troublesome assumptions concern the cost and availability of technologies for controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these technologies are either not currently commercially available or have yet to be constructed in the U.S., making their true construction costs no more than assumed estimates. If these technologies are either more expensive or their date of commercial availability is later than assumed by the modelers, costs of compliance with the proposed legislation will be greater than predicted. These costs will be borne by the consumer regardless of what proponents of the measure tell us.

A number of organizations have estimated the cost of Waxman-Markey including the Congressional Budget Office[2], the Environmental Protection Agency[3], the Heritage Foundation[4], and the Black Chamber of Commerce.[5] All these studies predict that most of the CO2 reductions will come from the electric generating sector because coal generates 49 percent of the electricity generated in America. Coal is a carbon dioxide intensive hydrocarbon, but it is also the least expensive generating technology. To replace this coal, modelers believe that nuclear; renewable; or carbon, capture and sequestration technology will be used—all more expensive technologies than traditional coal.[6]

Nuclear Power

What are the problems with this approach? No nuclear plant has been built in the United States since 1977[7] and the Administration has substantially reduced funding for Yucca Mountain,[8] the expected repository for spent nuclear fuel. And while the Energy Information Administration estimates that a future nuclear plant can be built for about $3300 per kilowatt (2007 dollars)[9], electric utility companies (NRG, Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy, Progress Energy) are estimating costs between $5,000 and $10,000 per kilowatt[10]. Underestimates of construction costs will result in higher compliance costs and alternative compliance strategies with cap and trade legislation.

Renewable Technologies

Renewable technologies that qualify under the Renewable Energy Standard of the House-passed legislation are limited in a number of ways. First, these sources of energy are more expensive than traditional coal and natural gas generating technologies. Second, they are limited to certain areas with renewable resources (in the case of solar and wind). Third, these resources are extremely costly for central station electricity generation (in the case of solar and offshore wind). And fourth, they are not yet commercially available (in the case of biomass gasification). EIA’s revised Annual Energy Outlook 2009, which incorporates subsidies and incentives included in the federal stimulus package, projects wind to be 50 percent more expensive than traditional coal-fired generation (without subsidies) in 2016[11]. This is most likely due to the fact that the best wind sites are used by then. Solar technologies are estimated by EIA to be 2.5 to 4 times the cost of traditional coal-fired technologies[12], and, as such, are not the renewable of choice in climate change scenarios.

Biomass technologies tend to supply much of the renewable power generated in many cap and trade scenarios since they supply base load power and are available in areas of the country with limited wind and solar power (e.g. the Southeast). However, while modelers predict substantial biomass capacity to be built to comply with cap and trade regulations, recent construction attempts show the public to be less favorable. In Greenfield, Massachusetts, for example, a developer wanting to construct a 47-megawatt biomass-fired plant fueled by “clean” wood energy from the surrounding forests,[13]has found local residents concerned about depletion of their forests, pollution from the plant, truck haulage and water usage issues.[14] The assumption of modelers is that the carbon dioxide released by the plant will be absorbed by trees in the growing process, resulting in zero net greenhouse gas emissions. Renewable advocates also believe that the future fuel for biomass technology will be energy crops (e.g. switch grass, poplars) grown near the generating plant, but these energy crops have yet to be grown in the U.S. on a commercial scale. Future ethanol plants are also expected to be fueled by energy crops to reach the renewable fuel mandates already legislated by Congress.[15]

Carbon Capture and Sequestration

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology is not currently commercially available. The costs of CCS are an assumption rather than a reality. Some modelers believe that some of the existing coal-fired technology will be retrofitted with CCS technology and new coal-fired units will be built with CCS to replace existing technology that will be prematurely retired. The result would be like replacing a perfectly good automobile (cash for clunkers, anyone?) or home appliance before it has served its useful life. Only in this case, it is not the automobile or appliance owner’s decision to incur higher investment costs since the consumer will be charged for the new plant every time electricity is used. Also, significant CCS will require a way to dispose of the carbon and a transportation system to get the carbon to the disposal site.[16]

Modeling Uncertainties

The Energy Information Administration just released its analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill.[17] In their analysis, they included a scenario that modeled the bill, but limited the penetration of certain technologies (nuclear, fossil with CCS, and biomass gasification) to their reference case levels, i.e. to their projected levels with current laws and regulations included. In this case, called Limited Alternatives, electricity prices were 33 percent higher in 2030 than in EIA’s reference case.[18]

Another uncertainty in modeling the Waxman-Markey bill is whether international offsets would be severely limited by cost, regulation and/or slow progress in reaching international agreements covering offsets in key countries and sectors. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has been criticized for the amount of international offsets they allowed in their analysis because of the uncertainty surrounding their implementation. For example, under the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism program, which allows companies to invest in offsets in developing countries, the ultimate availability of projects was some 2 billion tons lower than initially anticipated. The shortage derived from a variety of reasons, including the simple start-up time to create a project.[19] To represent this uncertainty EIA modeled a No International Offsets Case that assumed all emission reductions would need to be domestic. This resulted in average electricity prices 26 percent higher than the reference case in 2030.[20]

But marrying these two cases (a situation that is not out of the realm of serious possibility), results in electricity prices 77 percent higher than the reference case in 2030. U.S. consumers would be paying 17.83 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity (in 2007 dollars) on average.[21]

But this price increase will not be uniform because electricity prices vary widely from state to state. For example, during the first 4 months of 2009, Connecticut’s average electricity price was 17.4 cents per kilowatt hour and Wyoming’s average electricity price was 5.9 cents per kilowatt hour—a spread of 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour.[22] States like Wyoming could see their electricity prices disproportionately skyrocket.

Of course, a redistribution of electricity prices would take place among States since generation fuels would change from being mainly coal-based to being natural gas, wind, and solar-based. In this case, coal-fired generation would be reduced by 85 percent over the next 2 decades, resulting in premature retirement of coal-fired generating capacity.

Unfortunately, when EIA’s analysis is quoted, most reviewers will quote the basic case where all of these major uncertainties are assumed away, providing proponents of the Waxman-Markey bill to sell this to the public as all gain and no pain when the reality is just the opposite.

Conclusion

Can politicians wave a magic wand and spur faster growth in these replacement technologies? Perhaps, but Congress does not have a good track record at picking “next generation” technologies. We have been told for years that advanced biofuels will soon be commercially available. Congress even passed a law mandating the production of large amounts of advanced biofuels, including cellulosic ethanol, to begin in 2009 and reach 22 billion gallons by 2022.[23] Now that it is 2009, this appears unlikely. So what compels our lawmakers to continue to pass legislation that has so many uncertain elements? For starters, just follow the money.

[1] Environment and Energy Daily, June 26, 2009, http://www.eenews.net/EEDaily/2009/06/26bn/1/#1 .

[2] http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10262/hr2454.pdf

[3] http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/economics/pdfs/HR2454_Analysis

[4] http://www.heritage.org/Research/Energyandenvironment/wm2438.cfm

[5] http://www.crai.com/uploadedFiles/Publications/impact-on-the-economy-of-the-american-clean-energy-and-security-act-of-2009.pdf

[6] http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/levelized-cost-of-new-generating-technologies.pdf

[7] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_was_the_last_nuclear_power_plant_built_in_the_US

[8] Washington Post, March 4, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303638.html

[9] Energy Information Administration, Assumptions to the Annual Energy Outlook 2009, Table 8.2, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/assumption/pdf/tbl8.2.pdf

[10]Robert Peltier, July 10, 2009, Master Resource, http://masterresource.org/?p=3539

[11] http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/levelized-cost-of-new-generating-technologies.pdf

[12] Ibid.

[13] Feeling the burn: Developer plans biomass power plant, Greenfield Recorder, January, 15, 2009, http://www.recorder.com/story.cfm?id_no=5676106

[14] Greenfield Recorder, July 3, 2009

[15] Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, Public Law 110-140, http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ140.110.pdf

[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage

[17] Energy Information Administration, Energy Market and Economic Impacts of H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act 0f 2009, July 2009, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/hr2454/index.html.

[18] Ibid, Table 2

[19] Climate Wire, CBO report studies offset costs and reliability, August 4, 2009, http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2009/08/04/4/ .

[20] [20] Energy Information Administration, Energy Market and Economic Impacts of H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act 0f 2009, July 2009, Table 1, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/hr2454/index.html.

[21] Ibid, Table 1

[22] Energy Information Administration, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_b.html

[23] Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, Public Law 110-140, http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ140.110.pdf

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Pahrump Valley Times
August 05, 2009

Information center is 'a hell of a benefit' to Nye County

By Mark Smith
PVT

The way Sen. Harry Reid is working, the re-opening of the Nye County Yucca Mountain Information Center across from the post office on Postal Road may not have much of a point.

But while Reid and others may think it's a case of Dead Information Center Walking, Darrell Lacy, director of the Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office, or NWRPO, said Saturday it should have a long-term future.

The Department of Energy set up the facility a year ago, he said during the grand re-opening Saturday, and he doesn't want to see it go to waste.

The Nye County commissioners established the NWRPO as Nye County's staff agency to ensure county policies and actions regarding nuclear waste activities are conducted to protect the health, welfare, and economic well-being of its residents and environment, and to plan for and mitigate possible impacts of the repository, if it is located in Nye County.

In a worst-case scenario, Lacy said, were funding for Yucca Mountain simply cut to nothing, the displays and exhibits could be moved to the Pahrump Historical Museum where they would have a permanent home. Should Yucca Mountain be de-funded, the material could be moved out there where a new building is expected.

"We don't want this to be thrown away," Lacy said.

No problem, in the mind of Commissioner Gary Hollis. Whatever Reid does where the money is concerned, he said, the law that calls for the repository remains on the books and can only be removed by an act of Congress.

"We have to be engaged to protect the health, safety and welfare of the county," Hollis said.

He said the office focuses on more than just nuclear waste, it also stresses the need for alternative energy development, be it wind, solar or other types.

"Any way that we can make it work," Hollis said.

On hand for the re-opening were the Pahrump Fire-Rescue Services with its hazmat units as well as KNYE Radio.

Also displaying their efforts were Valley Electric Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and there was even a display involving radon gas.

Radon, said Lacy, exists in any case and is a significant concern for homeowners. Water transport is also a matter of interest, especially given the tests being undertaken at the Nevada Test Site

Michael Voegele, a Nye County consultant, said he is not so much a Yucca promoter as a distributor of information that can allow the public to make up its own mind. "My goal is to get you to understand."

"We need all forms of energy," Lacy said. "Indirectly, there's a hell of a benefit to Nye County."

Other ideas include what Voegele indicated are even more intriguing directions, like what is called Hot Dry Rock Geothermal Energy, a method of extracting the heat from rocks far underground and using it to boil liquids that can then run turbines at the surface.

Efforts to begin testing at the test site are getting under way, he and Lacy said, and could be approved within a matter of months.

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American Chronicle
August 05, 2009

Idaho Delegation, Governor Decry Funding Cut for Yucca Mountain

Washington, DC – The Idaho congressional delegation joined with Idaho Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter to respond to the announcement that the Obama Administration has struck a deal to not request any funding for Yucca Mountain in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget.

Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter said, "The federal government made a commitment to Idaho under the landmark 1995 settlement agreement that it will get its radioactive waste out of the state no later than 2035. It's troubling to see this President and certain members of Congress taking actions such as this and undermining the federal government´s ability to keep its commitments to the detriment of Idahoans and the nation. It's a breach of trust."

Senator Mike Crapo said, "I am disappointed that the Administration will not be requesting the appropriate funding to continue to meet its obligation to Idaho to find a permanent storage facility for waste that has been sitting over our aquifer for years and years. The State of Idaho has a court-approved agreement with specific deadlines for the Department of Energy to remove all nuclear waste from the state, and the federal government must live up to that agreement. Without a permanent location to safely store nuclear waste, the role of nuclear energy as a component in our nation´s energy portfolio will be severely affected. I will do all in my power to ensure that the federal government lives up to its commitment to the State and people of Idaho."

Senator Jim Risch said, "The President´s decision to kill the nation´s congressionally-directed repository for high-level nuclear waste as a favor to one state is politics at its worst. This is a political deal that flies in the face of our nation´s energy security as well as the Settlement Agreement that the state of Idaho reached with the federal government in 1995," said Risch. "I brought the Settlement Agreement to the Secretary of Energy´s attention for the first time during his nomination hearing in January and this week I met with him again and confirmed his knowledge of those obligations. The Administration´s decision to knowingly undermine their commitments to Idaho and 33 other states, with no clear alternative, cannot stand. This has become a hallmark of this Administration, first with the Guantanamo prison site and now Yucca Mountain, to jump without knowing where they are going to land."

"For an Administration that touts science over politics, it seems to have gotten amnesia on Yucca Mountain," said Representative Mike Simpson. "Dozens of scientific studies over the past ten years have clearly shown that Yucca Mountain is not only a suitable, but perhaps perfect, place to store spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste. Yucca´s demise, and the tens of billions it will ultimately cost taxpayers, is nothing more for President Obama than the price of Nevada´s five electoral votes. The House and Senate both have strong majorities that support Yucca Mountain and I remain hopeful that Senator Reid and President Obama will not have the last word on this matter."

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Mountain Home News
August 05, 2009

Letter: Nuclear energy isn't answer

Dear editor:

Nuclear energy sounds like the answer to this country's energy problems, but it isn't.

For decades, nuclear power has been peddled as being an efficient and inexpensive energy. In the '50s, nuclear advocates loudly promised the world that atomic power would provide electricity "too cheap to meter." That promise dissolved with the reality of reactor construction costs in the 1970s and 1980s.

But the price to consumers isn't limited to just the cost of the power usage that is listed on your monthly electricity bill. It goes way beyond that. Nuclear power is not cheap. Since the very beginning the government has been heaping subsidies, which come from our tax dollars, into the building and running of nuclear plants. But these cash payments and tax breaks are not the most valuable subsidies that they receive. The most important subsidies that the investors and owners can receive come from shifting the risks onto the taxpayers or the surrounding area's population.

A lot of the risks to the investors are financial, such as the unexpected costs associated with construction, or the risk of defaulting on the costs of loans or the debts that can occur from construction delays or administrative failure and error. The investors know that the loan guarantees and other subsidies can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year for each nuclear reactor. Our government pays the owners and investors these subsidies, which again, are derived from our tax dollars. And because of these subsidies, it appears that the actual costs of building and running a nuclear power plant are a lot cheaper then they really are. This also makes it practically impossible for less subsidized forms of energy to have a fair chance to compete.

Since its inception, the nuclear industry has benefited greatly from government programs that shift the key risks of the nuclear fuel cycle away from investors and onto taxpayers. All operating nuclear power plants in the U.S. were built with very large public subsidies (our tax dollars again). These include large subsidies for research and development, for plant construction, for uranium enrichment, and for waste management. Since the very beginning, the nuclear industry has been supported by the public monies given to them from our government (our tax dollars), as well as monumental and lucrative tax write-offs.

Constellation's Co-CEO Michael Wallace said that "Without loan guarantees we will not build nuclear power plants." Another Constellation executive acknowledged in testimony before the California Energy Commission "that every planned future reactor would need to receive federal loan guarantees in order to be viable."

With the increased number of nuclear power plants being built and the decline in uranium supplies caused by the flooding of some of the world's largest uranium mines, the price of uranium will most likely continue to rise. In 2006, 45 percent of the world supply of uranium came from old nuclear warheads, most of which came from Russia, and it is estimated that at the current rate of use, those old stockpiles will be depleted by 2015. So the supply of uranium will most likely not meet the demands of the future.

One of the major problems that we will face regarding nuclear plants, besides the world's declining uranium supplies, will be the handling of all the nuclear wastes that are piling up. If there were one thousand 1 GWe reactors of the light-water type built and running in the world, we would need a new repository at least the size of the Yucca Mountain repository built in the world every three to four years. The taxpayers have spent at least $13 billion on the unfinished Yucca Mountain and the costs can only go higher.

This is what I believe Mr. Gillespie, his cohorts and investors truly want. They want all the government subsidies, funding and risk protection. AEHI hasn't decided on what they want to build. They haven't offered up real plans. They've promise the community hundreds of jobs without letting these people know that it might be many years (if ever) before they will become available.

And it is quite believable that they might obtain the rights to build a nuclear power plant, only to turn around and sell those rights to another company or investment group. These might even include companies from other countries. There is a planned new reactor at Calvert Cliffs in Lusby, Md. The consortium of firms that plan to build this plant include Areva, Electricite de France and Constellation Energy. Interestingly, ownership of these firms means that the governments of France and Germany will also be heavily involved in American energy production.

But whoever begins construction here will need to hire a lot of workers. A few workers will come from Elmore County, but many more will come from other places. Many specialists are required for every aspect of the construction and eventually the running of the nuclear plant and the local community can offer little to meet this need. Thus, many of the jobs, if not all of them, will be for people from outside this area, this state and even the country.

The incoming workers to Elmore County will expect to have places to stay, places to eat, places to be entertained, schools for their children... the list goes on. We, the citizens of Elmore County, will need to come up with the money to supply these things.

It will be a very long time before we ever see any benefits, from this nuclear plant... if ever. Our county will have to front these monies to improve our county so the influx of nuclear workers will want to spend their time and money here. Our county does not have this kind of money and so will look to the county's taxpayers to supply the colossal amount of money that will be needed.

The agricultural land that Don Gillespie and his group wish to build on is a part of our diminishing precious cropland that we have here in Elmore County and the Snake River is vital to maintaining this land and the people who live here. If the water is gone... the people are gone. Not just here but all the way to the Pacific Ocean. We can live without electricity... but we can't survive without food or water.

The nuclear industry suffers from a lack of manufacturing facilities and a trained workforce. The costs for the basic building materials like steel and concrete are spiraling out of sight. It is long past time for the government to step back and stop its intervention in the energy sector.

It is critical for our government to remain neutral to allow truly viable energy solutions a chance to be developed

Catherine Brown

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Wheeling News-Register
August 05, 2009

Editorial:

Decision Doesn’t Serve Americans

By The Intelligencer

Politics, not responsible policy, rules the White House and Congress. That is made more clear with every passing day of President Barack Obama's administration.

Last week it was revealed that Obama has ordered that work on the Yucca Mountain, Nev., nuclear waste repository be halted. Clearly, the president did so at the request of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

But as was the case with his politically motivated order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Obama seems to have no alternative to Yucca Mountain in mind. Politics, not the consequences to the American people, came first in his mind.

Planning to use Yucca Mountain as a site to dispose of the nation's growing stockpile of nuclear waste has been in progress for years. The site appears to be a safe place to store nuclear waste.

Without a repository, nuclear waste will remain at thousands of locations throughout the United States. That simply is not prudent.

Obama's decision, then, serves his political cronies - but not the American people.

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Delaware News Journal
August 05, 2009

Letter:

Nuclear power is dangerous and too expensive to build

A recent letter advocated more nuclear power plants.

There are too many problems with this technology. First, companies will not build nuclear power plants without the protection of the Price-Anderson Act which provides taxpayer compensation in case of an accident since no company in the world will insure them.

Price-Anderson, however, only provides $500 million when the latest government report, states that depending on the severity of the accident, damages could run in the billions. Second, after 50 years of operation there is still the waste problem. Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared before the House lawmakers on June 3 and declared the planned Yucca Mountain repository “dead.”

More than $9 billion have been invested developing this waste dump, which caused one lawmaker to say: “We got a mighty expensive dinosaur sitting there.” This waste, which is lethal for thousands of years, now stays on site in fuel pools and dry casts for future generations to worry about. Minimum morality would demand that we, at least, stop producing it. Estimates as to the cost of this “eventual cleanup” are incalculable.

Still the proponents declare nuclear as cheap energy.

Third, uranium, like oil, is a finite fuel. Reprocessing, the separation of plutonium which can then again be used as fuel, was discontinued by the United States nearly three decades ago on nonproliferation grounds.

Fourth, since 2005, cost estimates for building a new nuclear reactor have more then tripled. Nuclear energy, once declared to be “too cheap to meter,” is now too expensive to pursue.

Frieda Berryhill
Wilmington
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Heartland Institute
August 05, 2009

A History of America’s Nuclear Power Experience: Part Two

Jay Lehr, Ph.D.

Last month I promised to recount William Tucker’s excellent chapter on nuclear waste reprocessing from his outstanding book Terrestrial Energy. After considerable study of this issue, I can report Tucker did the job about as well as it can be done.

There is no simple way to explain the chemical engineering involved in nuclear waste reprocessing. It is elegant but by no means simple. Thus I can only paraphrase his exceptional effort to make the complex more understandable.

No Such Thing as Waste

In strict physical terms, there is no such thing as nuclear waste. Using a resource does not automatically turn it into waste. As environmentalists have long taught us, pollution is really just resources out of place.

The by-products of nuclear fission are so incredibly compact and potentially useful, none of them need to be thrown away. They are sitting there waiting to be processed. Almost 100 percent of the material in spent nuclear fuel rods can be recycled as useful material, and it is being done in other parts of the world today.

The very small amounts of material that cannot be reprocessed economically today can be stored safely until it becomes financially feasible in the future. There truly is no such thing as nuclear waste.

All Is Usable

More than 95 percent of a spent fuel rod is uranium-238, the same material we initially mine from the Earth. In nearly every other country in the world with nuclear power plants, this uranium-238 is reused to create more nuclear energy.

The remaining 5 percent is too intensely radioactive to be used for the fission process, but it has other uses. These radioactive isotopes have found broad implementation in medicine and industry. Forty percent of all medical procedures now involve some kind of radioactive isotopes, such as the tracers commonly used in diagnostics and the energy sources used to fight cancer.

Global Reprocessing

So why are we making such a fuss over the proposed and long-delayed Yucca Mountain repository for nuclear waste? The answer is that we stopped reprocessing nuclear fuel rods in the 1970s because we were afraid recycling would lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons in other countries. This concern has proven totally unwarranted.

While the United States gave up reprocessing, Canada, England, France, Japan, and Russia did not. All now have a recycling industry and very little waste storage problem.

Reprocessing Procedures

All commercial reprocessing plants use the well-proven hydrometallurgical plutonium uranium extraction process, called PUREX for short. This involves dissolving the fuel elements in concentrated nitric acid. Chemical separation of uranium and plutonium is then undertaken by solvent extraction steps, (neptunium, which may be used for producing plutonium-238 for thermal-electric generators for spacecraft, also can be recovered if required).

The plutonium and uranium can be returned to the input side of the fuel cycle—the uranium goes to the conversion plant prior to re-enrichment, and the plutonium goes straight to mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication.

Alternatively, some small amount of recovered uranium can be left with the plutonium sent to the MOX plant, so the plutonium is never separated on its own. This is known as the co-extraction process (COEX) developed in France but not yet in use.

U.S. Plant Under Construction

President Ronald Reagan lifted the reprocessing ban in 1981, but Congress did not allocate the substantial subsidy that would have been necessary to start commercial reprocessing efforts.

In 1999 the Department of Energy signed a contract with a consortium of U.S. companies to design and operate a mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility at the Savanna River site in South Carolina, which began construction in October 2005.

I’ll present more on reprocessing and Bill Tucker’s marvelous book Terrestrial Energy next month.

--Jay Lehr, Ph.D. (lehr@heartland.org) is science director of The Heartland Institute.

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Miller-McCune
August 05, 2009

Not Recycling, and Proud of It

Michael Scott Moore

America's still-undecided policy on nuclear waste means the spent rods just keep a-piling up.

Europe's largest nuclear reprocessing plant, COGEMA La Hague, sits on a flat hill in the middle of a Normandy peninsula, surrounded by farms and a number of pretty beaches. Since 1966, the plant has done the dirty work of recycling spent fuel rods from French nuclear reactors. In the meantime it also takes contract work from other countries — Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands — to relieve them of the burden of running similar plants on their own soil.

Europe recycles nuclear fuel; America doesn't. It would sound like a cliché about wasteful Americans if nuclear recycling weren't such a nasty business.

Nasty but alluring: A typical fuel rod has only released about 10 percent of its energy by the time it's considered "spent," but it remains too hot to be stored in, say, an underground salt mine. Right now, American nuclear plants keep their spent rods on-site in concrete "dry storage" casks, where they radiate quietly until the U.S. government either a) figures out how to reprocess them safely, or b) thinks of a more permanent place to keep them — since the Obama administration recently nixed the Yucca Mountain plan.

"Waste is just too gross of a term for it," said Sherrell Greene, director of Nuclear Technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, according to Forbes magazine. Greene wants to find new ways to recycle nuclear fuel. "I'm trying to get to the 90 percent of the fuel in that rod."

The irony is that American scientists first developed a recycling process at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project. But Washington has discouraged fuel rod recycling since the '70s because a byproduct of the process, plutonium-235, is both useful to build weapons and relatively easy to steal.

Reprocessing plants in the U.K. and Russia solve the plutonium problem by storing and guarding it — Scientific American estimates ever-growing Russian and British stockpiles large enough to make 15,000 nuclear bombs. The plant at La Hague has found a way to reuse some of its plutonium and bind the rest of it to highly radioactive waste from the reactor, making it, in effect, lethal to steal. Germany and other countries in Europe deal with their nuclear waste problem simply by sending it to France.

But Greene says his lab at Oak Ridge has had a breakthrough: They've figured out how to recycle used fuel without isolating plutonium-235. A recycled fuel pellet produced by his lab "contains uranium, neptunium and plutonium," he told journalists at a recent press junket, "while never having created pure plutonium in the process."

Reprocessing would still be hugely expensive, because it requires special reactors. And, of course, it pollutes: Greenpeace accuses COGEMA La Hague of releasing a million liters of radioactive water into the ocean every year, and some researchers have said the incidence of leukemia is higher among children whose mothers went to those Normandy beaches, or ate the local shellfish, than among children elsewhere in France.

The new process, if anything, would be dirtier, since it would leave behind highly radioactive nuclear waste; but the waste would also degrade faster than unprocessed fuel rods — in dozens of years, according to Greene, rather than tens of thousands.

But not everyone thinks it would be safer.

"Some claim that new reprocessing technologies that would leave the plutonium blended with other elements, such as neptunium, would result in a mixture that would be too radioactive to steal," writes Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, on the UCS Web site. "This is incorrect; neither neptunium nor the other elements under consideration are radioactive enough to preclude theft." Furthermore, "Most of these other elements are also weapon-usable."

For now, it's probably safer to leave old American fuel rods where they are, in concrete casks, and the Obama administration, in late June, quietly nixed a Bush-era step toward an American nuclear reprocessing plant. The Bush plan was just an environmental study, but it belonged to a wider initiative called GNEP, the Global Nuclear Energy Project, to close the nuclear fuel cycle. The Department of Energy now says it "is no longer pursuing domestic commercial reprocessing."

Sure. Many presidents from now, though, the spent rods will still be piling up.

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Hanford News
August 04, 2009

Hanford waste study delayed over Yucca Mountain

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer

A long-awaited study expected to lead to final decisions on environmental cleanup of much of the Hanford nuclear reservation's waste has been delayed because of Yucca Mountain.

The draft Tank Closure & Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement most recently was expected to be released in May. Now the Department of Energy is saying the draft report, expected to be thousands of pages long, will be available by the end of the year.

The draft was originally planned to be ready in spring 2007.

"It's a very large, complex document that requires a very thorough and focused effort to get it done and done right," said Carrie Meyer, Department of Energy spokeswoman.

The wide-ranging environmental study was planned to address such key questions as how quickly to treat radioactive waste now stored in underground tanks, how much waste may be left at the bottom of the tanks and what to do with the tanks themselves.

However, because of the Obama administration's decision to sideline plans for opening a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the Hanford draft study will be delayed.

Additional time is needed to align the draft study "with recent direction to re-evaluate the options for disposal of high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel," DOE said in a statement.

Hanford's high-level tank waste was planned to be sent to the nation's nuclear waste repository after being treated.

The study also will look at disposal alternatives for Hanford chemical and radioactive waste and such wastes sent from other states to be buried permanently at Hanford.

DOE had completed a study on solid waste, but the state of Washington questioned whether ground water information was adequate. Then during the final stages of a lawsuit filed by the state against DOE to stop the importation of nuclear waste to Hanford, DOE discovered problems with the ground water information in the study.

It agreed to redo portions of the study as part of a settlement in January 2006 and to not ship most types of radioactive waste to Hanford until a new study was prepared. The solid waste study then was combined with the tank waste study that already was under way.

The study also will cover the final treatment and disposal of strontium and cesium capsules now stored in a pool at Hanford. And it will address the final shutdown of Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility.

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CleanTechnica
August 03, 2009

Congress Slashes Obama’s Energy Education Program in Energy and Water Bill

by Yael Borofsky

Last Wednesday, the Senate passed the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill (H.R. 3183), appropriating $34.3 billion in energy spending for FY2010. Although the bill made good on Obama’s campaign promise to shut down Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility and funds numerous Army Corps of Engineers’ water initiatives, the bill is shockingly silent with regard to Obama’s energy education program RE-ENERGYSE.

A recent article by TIME’s Bryan Walsh also calls attention to Congress’s stinginess with Obama’s Energy Secretary, Steven Chu’s proposed “energy innovation hubs,” to which the House appropriated $35 million of $280 million he suggested. This allotment is enough to pay for one hub, not the eight R&D centers called for in Chu’s proposal.

These slim-to-none appropriations demonstrate a serious lack of consideration for clean tech research and education - both crucial factors in the effort to transition to a clean energy economy and maintain leadership in the clean tech race. Considering the initial progress the U.S. had already made in clean tech development, increasing funding to facilitate the continuation of clean-tech R&D while simultaneously improving math and science education to usher in a new generation of creative clean-tech innovators could only serve as an enormous asset to the United States.

The importance of fully funding both Obama’s and Chu’s proposals becomes even more urgent in light of the enormous investments that Asian nations like China, South Korea, and Japan are making in clean energy technology. Many, including Walsh, have compared the clean tech challenge to the Apollo project, when the government invested today’s equivalent of $125 billion in both R&D and education in order to land on the moon.

Similar prescience, on the part of Congress and its appropriations, would have stimulated America’s international competitiveness in the growing clean energy economy while motivating our nation’s youth to partake in the clean tech revolution.

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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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